The great strikes of 1953 on Soviet labor camps in the accounts of their participants : A review

Abstract

Andrea Graziosi, The great strikes of 1953 in Soviet labor camps in the accounts of their participants. A review. The review presents a sketch of the great strikes waged by forced laborers in Noril'sk, Vorkuta and Karaganda soon after the death of Stalin in the summer of 1953. It is based both on autobiographical materials and on archival data on the Gulag archipelago recently published in Russia. The changes which preceded and prepared the strikes, the strikes themselves and their consequences are analyzed. Special attention is devoted to the impact of the war in the camps' life; to the ethnic and social composition of the forced labor force; to the role of the various nationalities; and to the demise of Stalin's despotic system, precipitated by the despot's passing but already in the making in previous years, of which the strikes were both a cause and a symptom.